Chambers Robert William
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XIV

So Brown told her about his theory; how he desired to employ a model, how he desired to study her; what were his ideas of the terms suitable.

He talked fluently, earnestly, and agreeably; and his pretty audience listened with so much apparent intelligence and good taste that her very attitude subtly exhilarated Brown, until he became slightly aware that he was expressing himself eloquently.

He had, it seemed, much to say concerning the profession and practice of good literature. It seemed, too, that he knew a great deal about it, both theoretically and practically. His esteem and reverence for it were unmistakable; his enthusiasm worthy of his courage.

He talked for a long while, partly about literature, partly about himself. And he was at intervals a trifle surprised that he had so much to say, and wondered at the valuable accumulations of which he was unburdening himself with such vast content.

The girl had turned her back to the lagoon and stood leaning against the coquina wall, facing him, her slender hands resting on the coping.

Never had he had such a listener. At the clubs and cafés other literary men always wanted to talk. But here under the great southern stars nobody interrupted the limpid flow of his long dammed eloquence. And he ended leisurely, as he had begun, yet auto-intoxicated, thrillingly conscious of the spell which he had laid upon himself, upon his young listener – conscious, too, of the spell that the soft air and the perfume and the stars had spun over a world grown suddenly and incredibly lovely and young.

She said in a low voice: "I need the money very much… And I don't mind your studying me."

"Do you really mean it?" he exclaimed, enchanted.

"Yes. But there is one trouble."

"What is it?" he asked apprehensively.

"I must have my mornings to myself."

He said: "Under the terms I must be permitted to ask you any questions I choose. You understand that, don't you?"

"Yes," she said.

"Then – why must you have your mornings to yourself?"

"I have work to do."

"What work? What are you?"

She flushed a trifle, then, accepting the rules of the game, smiled at Brown.

"I am a school-teacher," she said. "Ill health from overwork drove me South to convalesce. I am trying to support myself here by working in the mornings."

"I am sorry," he said gently. Then, aware of his concession to a very human weakness, he added with businesslike decision: "What is the nature of your morning's work?"

"I – write," she admitted.

"Stories?"

"Yes."

"Fiction?"

"Anything, Mr. Brown. I send notes to fashion papers, concerning the costumes at the Hotel Verbena; I write for various household papers special articles which would not interest you at all. I write little stories for the women's and children's columns in various newspapers. You see what I do is not literature, and could not interest you."

"If you are to act for me in the capacity of a model," he said firmly, "I am absolutely bound to study every phase of you, every minutest detail."

"Oh."

"Not one minute of the day must pass without my observing you," he said. "Unless you are broad-minded enough to comprehend me you may think my close and unremitting observation impertinent."

"You don't mean to be impertinent, I am sure," she faltered, already surprised, apprehensive, and abashed by the prospect.

"Of course I don't mean to be impertinent," he said smilingly, "but all great observers pursue their studies unremittingly day and night – "

"You couldn't do that!" she exclaimed.

"No," he admitted, troubled, "that would not be feasible. You require, of course, a certain amount of slumber."

"Naturally," she said.

"I ought," he said thoughtfully, "to study that phase of you, also."

"What phase, Mr. Brown?"

"When you are sleeping."

"But that is impossible!"

"Convention," he said disdainfully, "makes it so. A literary student is fettered.

"But it is perfectly possible for you to imagine what I look like when I'm asleep, Mr. Brown."

"Imagination is to play no part in my literary work," he said coldly. "What I set down are facts."

"But is that art?"

"There is more art in facts than there are facts in art," he said.

"I don't quite know what you mean."

He didn't, either, when he came to analyse what he had said; and he turned very red and admitted it.

"I mean to be honest and truthful," he said. "What I just said sounded clever, but meant nothing. I admit it. I mean to be perfectly pitiless with myself. Anything tainted with imagination; anything hinting of romance; any weak concession to prejudice, convention, good taste, I refuse to be guilty of. Realism is what I aim at; raw facts, however unpleasant!"

"I don't believe you will find anything very unpleasant about me," she said.

"No, I don't think I shall. But I mean to detect every imperfection, every weakness, every secret vanity, every unworthy impulse. That is why I desire to study you so implacably. Are you willing to submit?"

She bit her lip and looked thoughtfully at the stars.

"You know," she said, "that while it may be all very well for you to say 'anything for art's sake,' I can't say it. I can't do it, either."

"Why not?"

"Because I can't. You know perfectly well that you can't follow me about taking notes every minute of the twenty-four hours."

He said very earnestly: "Sir John Lubbock sat up day and night, never taking his eyes off the little colony of ants which he had under observation in a glass box!"

"Do you propose to sit up day and night to keep me under observation?" she asked, flushed and astounded.

"Not at first. But as my studies advance, and you become accustomed to the perfectly respectful but coldly impersonal nature of my observations, your mind, I trust, will become so broadened that you will find nothing objectionable in what at first might scare you. An artist's model, for example – "

"But I am not an artist's model!" she exclaimed, with a slight shiver.

"To be a proper model at all," he said, "you must concede all for art, and remain sublimely unconscious of self. You do not matter. I do not matter. Only my work counts. And that must be honest, truthful, accurate, minute, exact – a perfect record of a woman's mind and personality."

For a few moments they both remained silent. And after a little the starlight began to play tricks with her eyes again, so that they seemed sparkling with hidden laughter. But her face was grave.

She said: "I really do need the money. I will do what I can… And if in spite of my courage I ever shrink – our contract shall terminate at once."

"And what shall I do then?" inquired Brown.

The starlight glimmered in her eyes. She said very gravely:

"In case the demands of your realism and your art are too much for my courage, Mr. Brown – you will have to find another model to study."

"But another model might prove as conventional as you!"

"In that case," she said, while her sensitive lower lip trembled, and the starlight in her eyes grew softly brilliant, "in that case, Mr. Brown, I am afraid that there would be only one course to pursue with that other model."

"What course is that?" he asked, deeply interested.

"I'm afraid you'd have to marry her."

"Good Lord!" he said. "I can't marry every girl I mean to study!"

"Oh! Do you mean to study very many?"

"I have my entire life and career before me."

"Yes. That is true. But – women are much alike. One model, thoroughly studied, might serve for them all – with a little imagination."

"I have no use for imagination in fiction," said Brown firmly. After a moment's silence, he added: "Is it settled, then?"

"About our – contract?"

"Yes."

She considered for a long while, then, looking up, she nodded.

"That's fine!" exclaimed Brown, with enthusiasm.

They walked back to the Villa Hibiscus together, slowly, through the blue starlight. Brown asked her name, and she told him.

"No," he said gaily, "your name is Thalomene, and you are the tenth muse. For truly I think I have never before been so thoroughly inspired by a talk with anyone."

She laughed. He had done almost all the talking. And he continued it, very happily, as by common consent they seated themselves on the veranda.

XV

The inhabitants of the Villa Hibiscus retired. But Brown talked on, quite unconscious that the low-voiced questions and softly modulated replies were magic which incited him to a perfect ecstasy of self-revelation.

Perhaps he thought he was studying her – for the compact by mutual consent was already in force – and certainly his eyes were constantly upon her, taking, as no doubt he supposed, a cold and impersonal measure of her symmetry. Calmly, and with utter detachment, he measured her slender waist, her soft little hands; noting the fresh, sweet lips, the clear, prettily shaped eyes, the delicate throat, the perfect little Greek head with its thick, golden hair.

And all the while he held forth about literature and its true purpose; about what art really is; about his own art, his own literature, and his own self.

And the girl was really fascinated.

She had seen, at a distance, such men. When Brown had named himself to her, she had recognised the name with awe, as a fashionable and wealthy name known to Gotham.

Yet, had Brown known it, neither his eloquence nor his theories, nor his aims, were what fascinated her. But it was his boyish enthusiasm, his boyish intolerance, his immaturity, his happy certainty of the importance of what concerned himself.

He was so much a boy, so much a man, such a candid, unreasonable, eager, selfish, impulsive, portentous, and delightfully illogical mixture of boy and man that the combination fascinated every atom of womanhood in her – and at moments as the night wore on, she found herself listening perilously close to the very point of sympathy.

He appeared to pay no heed to the flight of time. The big stars frosted Heaven; the lagoon was silvered by them; night winds stirred the orange bloom; oleanders exhaled a bewitching perfume.

As he lay there in his rocking chair beside her, it seemed to him that he had known her intimately for years – so wonderfully does the charm of self-revelation act upon human reason. For she had said almost nothing about herself. Yet, it was becoming plainer to him every moment that never in all his life had he known any woman as he already knew this young girl.

"It is wonderful," he said, lying back in his chair and looking up at the stars, "how subtle is sympathy, and how I recognise yours. I think I understand you perfectly already."

"Do you?" she said.

"Yes, I feel sure I do. Somehow, I know that secretly and in your own heart you are in full tide of sympathy with me and with my life's work."

"I thought you had no imagination," she said.

"I haven't. Do you mean that I only imagine that you are in sympathy with me?"

"No," she said. "I am."

After a few moments she laughed deliciously. He never knew why. Nor was she ever perfectly sure why she had laughed, though they discussed the matter very gravely.

A new youth seemed to have invaded her, an exquisite sense of lightness, of power. Vaguely she was conscious of ability, of a wonderful and undreamed of capacity. Within her heart she seemed to feel the subtle stir of a new courage, a certainty of the future, of indefinable but splendid things.

The manuscript of the novel which she had sent North two weeks ago seemed to her a winged thing soaring to certain victory in the empyrean. Suddenly, by some magic, doubt, fear, distress, were allayed – and it was like surcease from a steady pain, with all the blessed and heavenly languor relaxing her mind and body.

And all the while Brown talked on.

Lying there in her chair she listened to him while the thoughts in her eased mind moved in delicate accompaniment.

Somehow she understood that never in her life had she been so happy – with this boy babbling beside her, and her own thoughts responding almost tenderly to his youth, his inconsistencies, to the arrogance typical of his sex. He was so wrong! – so far from the track, so utterly astray, so pitiably confident! Who but she should know, who had worked and studied and failed and searched, always writing, however – which is the only way in the world to learn how to write – or to learn that there is no use in writing.

Her hand lay along the flat arm of her rocking-chair; and once, when he had earnestly sustained a perfectly untenable theory concerning success in literature, unconsciously she laid her fresh, smooth hand on his arm in impulsive protest.

"No," she said, "don't think that way. You are quite wrong. That is the road to failure!"

It was her first expression of disagreement, and he looked at her amazed.

"I am afraid you think I don't know anything about real literature and realism," she said, "but I do know a little."

"Every man must work out his salvation in his own way," he insisted, still surprised at her dissent.

"Yes, but one should be equipped by long practice in the art before definitely choosing one's final course."

"I am practiced."

"I don't mean theoretically," she murmured.

He laughed: "Oh, you mean mere writing," he said, gaily confident. "That, according to my theory, is not necessary to real experience. Literature is something loftier."

In her feminine heart every instinct of womanhood was aroused – pity for the youth of him, sympathy for his obtuseness, solicitude for his obstinacy, tenderness for the fascinating combination of boy and man, which might call itself by any name it chose – even "author" – and go blundering along without a helping hand amid shrugs and smiles to a goal marked "Failure."

"I wonder," she said almost timidly, "whether you could ever listen to me."

"Always," he said, bending nearer to see her expression. Which having seen, he perhaps forgot to note in his little booklet, for he continued to look at her.

"I haven't very much to say," she said. "Only – to learn any art or trade or profession it is necessary to work at it unremittingly. But to discuss it never helped anybody."

"My dear child," he said, "I know that what you say was the old idea. But," he shrugged, "I do not agree with it."

"I am so sorry," she said.

"Sorry? Why are you sorry?"

"I don't know… Perhaps because I like you."

It was not very much to say – not a very significant declaration; but the simplicity and sweetness of it – her voice – the head bent a little in the starlight – all fixed Brown's attention. He sat very still there in the luminous dusk of the white veranda; the dew dripped steadily like rain; the lagoon glittered.

Then, subtly, taking Brown unawares, his most treacherous enemy crept upon him with a stealth incredible, and, before Brown knew it, was in full possession of his brain. The enemy was Imagination.

Minute after minute slipped away in the scented dusk, and found Brown's position unchanged, where he lay in his chair looking at her.

The girl also was very silent.

With what wonderful attributes his enemy, Imagination, was busily endowing the girl beside him in the starlight, there is no knowing. His muse was Thalomene, slim daughter of Zeus; and whether she was really still on Olympus or here beside him he scarcely knew, so perfectly did this young girl inspire him, so exquisitely did she fill the bill.

"It is odd," he said, after a long while, "that merely a few hours with you should inspire me more than I have ever been inspired in all my life."

"That," she said unsteadily, "is your imagination."

At the hateful word, imagination, Brown seemed to awake from the spell. Then he sat up straight, rather abruptly.

"The thing to do," he said, still confused by his awakening, "is to consider you impersonally and make notes of everything." And he fumbled for pencil and note-book, and, rising, stepped across to the front door, where a light was burning.

Standing under it he resolutely composed his thoughts; but to save his life he could remember nothing of which to make a memorandum.

This worried him, and finally alarmed him. And so long did he stand there, note-book open, pencil poised, and a sickly expression of dismay imprinted upon his otherwise agreeable features, that the girl rose at last from her chair, glanced in through the door at him, and then came forward.

"What is the matter?" she asked.

"The matter is," said Brown, "that I don't seem to have anything to write about."

"You are tired," she said. "I think we both are a little tired."

"I am not. Anyway, I have something to write about now. Wait a moment till I make a note of how you walk – the easy, graceful, flowing motion, so exquisitely light and – "

"But I don't walk like that!" she said, laughing.

" – Graciously as a youthful goddess," muttered Brown, scribbling away busily in his note-book. "Tell me; what motive had you just now in rising and coming to ask me what was the matter – with such a sweetly apprehensive expression in your eyes?"

"My – my motive?" she repeated, astonished.

"Yes. You had one, hadn't you?"

"Why – I don't know. You looked worried; so I came."

"The motive," said Brown, "was feminine solicitude – an emotion natural to nice women. Thank you." And he made a note of it.

"But motives and emotions are different things," she said timidly. "I had no motive for coming to ask you why you seemed troubled."

"Wasn't your motive to learn why?"

"Y-yes, I suppose so."

He laid his head on one side and inspected her critically.

"And if anything had been amiss with me you would have been sorry, wouldn't you?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Why? Because – one is sorry when a friend – when anyone – "

"I am your friend," he said. "So why not say it?"

"And I am yours – if you wish," she said.

"Yes, I do." He began to write: "It's rather odd how friendship begins. We both seem to want to be friends." And to her he said: "How does it make you feel – the idea of our being friends? What emotions does it arouse in you?"

She looked at him in sorrowful surprise. "I thought it was real friendship you meant," she murmured, "not the sort to make a note about."

"But I've got to make notes of everything. Don't you see? Certainly our friendship is real enough – but I've got to study it minutely and make notes concerning it. It's necessary to make records of everything – how you walk, stand, speak, look, how you go upstairs – "

"I am going now," she said.

He followed, scribbling furiously; and it is difficult to go upstairs, watch a lady go upstairs, and write about the way she does it all at the same time.

"Good-night," she said, opening her door.

"Good-night," he said, absently, and so intent on his scribbling that he followed her through the door into her room.

XVI

"She goes upstairs as though she were floating up," he wrote, with enthusiasm; "her lovely figure, poised on tip-toe, seems to soar upward, ascending as naturally and gracefully as the immortals ascended the golden stairs of Jacob – "

In full flood of his treacherous imagination he seated himself on a chair beside her bed, rested the note-book on his knees, and scribbled madly, utterly oblivious to her. And it was only when he had finished, for sheer lack of material, that he recollected himself, looked up, saw how she had shrunk away from him against the wall – how the scarlet had dyed her face to her temples.

"Why – why do you come – into my bedroom?" she faltered. "Does our friendship count for no more than that with you?"

"What?" he said, bewildered.

"That you do what you have no right to do. Art – art is not enough to – to – excuse – disrespect – "

Suddenly the tears sprang to her eyes, and she covered her flushed face with both hands.

For a moment Brown stood petrified. Then a deeper flush than hers settled heavily over his features.

"I'm sorry," he said.

She made no response.

"I didn't mean to hurt you. I do respect you," he said.

No response.

Brown gazed at her, gazed at his note-book.

Then he hurled the note-book across the room and walked over to her as she lifted her lovely head, startled and tearful.

"You are right," he said, swallowing nothing very desperately. "You can not be studied this way. Will you – marry me?"

"What!"

"Will you marry me?"

"Why?" she gasped.

"Because I – want to study you."

"No!" she said, looking him straight in the eyes.

Brown thought hard for a full minute.

"Would you marry me because I love you?" he asked timidly.

The question seemed to be more than she could answer. Besides, the tears sprang to her blue eyes again, and her under lip began to tremble, and she covered her face with both hands. Which made it impossible for him to kiss her.

"Isn't it wonderful?" he said earnestly, trembling from head to foot. "Isn't it wonderful, dear?"

"Yes," she whispered. The word, uttered against his shoulder, was stifled. He bent his head nearer, murmuring:

"Thalomene – Thalomene – embodiment of Truth! How wonderful it is to me that at last I find in you that absolute Truth I worship."

"I am – the embodiment – of your – imagination," she said. "But you will never, never believe it – most adorable of boys – dearest – dearest of men."

And, lifting her stately and divine young head, she looked innocently at Brown while he imprinted his first and most chaste kiss upon the fresh, sweet lips of the tenth muse, Thalomene, daughter of Zeus.

"Athalie," said the youthful novelist more in sorrow than in anger, "you are making game of everything I hold most important."

"Provide yourself with newer and truer gods, dear child," said the girl, laughing. "After you've worshipped them long enough somebody will also poke fun at them. Whereupon, if you are fortunate enough to be one of those who continues to mature until he matures himself into the Ewigkeit, you will instantly quit those same over-mauled and worn out gods for newer and truer ones."

"And so on indefinitely," I added.

"In literature," began the novelist, "the great masters must stand as parents for us in our first infantile steps – "

"No," said the girl, "all worthy aspirants enter the field of literature as orphans. Opportunity and Fates alone stand for them in loco parentis. And the child of these is known as Destiny."

"No cubist could beat that, Athalie," remarked Duane. "I'm ashamed of you – or proud – I don't know which."

"Dear child," she said, "you will never know the true inwardness of any sentiment you entertain concerning me until I explain it to you."

"Smitten again hip and thigh," said Stafford. "Fair lady, I am far too wary to tell you what I think of the art of incoherence as practised occasionally by the prettiest Priestess in the Temple."

Athalie looked at me as the sweetmeat melted on her tongue.

"You promised me a dog," she remarked.

"I've picked him out. He'll be weaned in another week."

"What species of pup is he?" inquired Duane.

"An Iceland terrier," I answered. "They use them for digging out walrus and seals."

"Thank you," said Duane pleasantly.

"After all," observed the girl, lifting her glass of water, "it does not concern Mr. Duane what sort of a dog you have chosen for me."

She sipped it leisurely, looking over the delicate crystal rim at Duane.

"You are young," she said. "'L'enfance est le sommeil de la raison.'"

"How would you like to have an Angora kitten?" he asked, reddening slightly.

"But infancy," she added, "is always adorable… I think I might like a white one with blue eyes."

"Puppies, kittens, children," remarked Stafford – "they're all tolerable while they're young."

"All of these," said the girl softly, "I should like to have."

And she gazed inquiringly at the crystal. But it could tell her nothing of herself or of her hopes. She turned and looked out into the dark city, a trifle wearily, it seemed to me.